I've always been a fairly easy-going guy, never getting over-emotional at work or in life's day-to-day interactions. I remember once an employee of mine shouting at me, so I said, "Felipe, have I ever shouted at you", he said "No", to which I replied "well how come you are shouting at me, and I'm your boss?!
At 25 years old I had my first child, a beautiful baby girl with red hair. Life started becoming more complicated, harder to manage all the things I had going on, I started feeling a little over-stretched. Three years later I had a baby boy. When he was a few months old I was changing his nappy in the middle of the night, he was wriggling around, mess going everywhere, anger and rage were coursing through my veins. That was the moment.
The moment, I realised that my anger was mine. Before then I always thought my anger was someone else's fault: my wife for being unreasonable, my mother for being annoying, etc. Now I realised it wasn't this little baby's fault that he was awake in the middle of the night, needing his nappy changed! So the anger arising was totally my own anger, something I needed to do recognise, embrace and transform.
So it wasn't until I had children that I realised that I was angry and impatient. But what to do about it? A quick online search revealed a book called "Anger, Cooling the Flames with Buddhist Wisdom". It turned out to be a beautiful book, with such beautiful compassionate writing that felt like it was written especially for me.
The author Thich Nhat Hanh, by chance, lived only 2 hours drive from where I was living in South West France, so off I went for a week's 'retreat'. It was there that I started to learn that we are responsible for all of our emotions, yes the environment is a trigger for our emotions, but ultimately those emotions are our own and not anyone else's responsibility.
That's a hard one to swallow as to take responsibility for our difficult emotions can make us feel like 'bad' people - we want to blame others for those emotions that we do not think are 'good'. However, slowly over time I came to see that actually that anger was passed to me by my parents, by my teachers, by my society. So even though it was mine, the 'me' that I had always imagined really was a manifestation of the environment that I had grown up in.
This realisation was extremely important for me as it enabled me to be compassionate with myself for experiencing anger. While I would do my best to be more grounded and present so that anger would not arise so easily, when it did arise, I forgave myself more quickly through the understanding that this anger was not 'me', allowing it to fall away again much quicker.
It's been 17 years now since my first child, and albeit slowly, the seed of anger in me seems to have got less and less strong. Whenever I see any difficult emotions arise, I try to embrace them, to own them as my own (rather than projecting them as other people's responsibility) and then to try to find their source. Once I can see their source, either in the things around me or within my past, understanding brings self-compassion for that emotional state, which seems to weaken the grip and duration of that emotion.
It's an ongoing journey, but such a wonderful revelation, as if we think being angry is someone else's responsibility how are we ever going to heal that anger? Only by owning it ourselves do we then have the power to transform it within ourselves. And if we stay angry and frustrated, scientifically we know that we create stress and illness in our body and mind.
Check out the many wonderful books by Thich Nhat Hanh, or see www.plumvillage.org
I will be doing many posts on the subjects of emotions, life, mindfulness, relationship etc - so do please follow me if you'd like to read more of this type of stuff ;-)
Sending smiles to you all,
Will"
